Oracle, Microsoft Come Together in Developer Deal

As a member of Microsoft's Visual Studio Industry Partner program, Oracle will integrate .Net developer tools with its database.

Oracle Corp. and Microsoft Corp. may not be the best of friends, but the two companies did come together this week to announce that Oracle is becoming a Premier-level member of Microsofts Visual Studio Industry Partner program.
The move should make it easier for mutual customers of the software giants to build and deploy Windows applications that use Oracles namesake database by providing tighter integration between the Oracle database and Microsofts Visual Studio.Net 2003 developer tools, the companies said.

Oracle will make Visual Studio .Net tools integrated with its database available on the Oracle Technology Network in the form of a free software download later this year. The download will allow developers to more easily create Windows applications capable of retrieving information from an Oracle database, according to Microsoft officials.

The two companies are fierce competitors in the database space with Microsofts SQL Server DBMS going head-to-head with Oracle. But the rhetoric in other areas has thawed to some degree; Oracle plans to call Microsoft as a witness in a case next month to determine if it will be allowed to acquire applications vendor PeopleSoft.
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